


innocence died screaming (ask me honey, i should know);

by kandyrezi



Category: Strange Men (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blood and Violence, F/M, Filming, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Manipulation, Minor Original Character(s), Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-23 01:09:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20883686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kandyrezi/pseuds/kandyrezi
Summary: he would chip away every bit of virtue barely hanging on to you by a thread, until you were just as much of a cold, unfeeling monster that he is.





	innocence died screaming (ask me honey, i should know);

**Author's Note:**

> still best boi brendon. wasn’t planning on posting this, but a kind commenter from my previous fic inspired me to.

**In the silent distance**, as you glance outside at the pitch black sky from the window, the tower clock in a big city would chime at this current moment of time, indicating that it’s midnight.

It would have, but you are not in a clock tower. Nor is there an indicator to tell you the exact time as you sit on your lonesome at the empty dining table, hands clasped together on the white table cloth and leg bouncing when your irrational thoughts get too out of hand. The chandelier above gently seesaws, reflecting the light back and forth as your eyes find themselves lost in the seamless patterns of the forming shadows. There’s a twisting feeling in your gut that leaves you unable to really relax anymore, the kind of feeling that’s caused you to lose sleep over the past couple of weeks and for time to become a meaningless meander.

Aside from the occasional screams and pleas of the unfortunate souls being held in captivity, the Livingstone Castle is always so _quiet_, making the feeling of possibly getting jumped from behind increase by a tenfold. If not by a phantom of someone who had died in this castle, then by _B__rendon_, at the very least least, who seemed to get a kick out of giving you a good scare every now and then, being trained in stealth well enough to actually accomplish it.

The castle doesn’t lack a shortage of rooms for him to mutilate and toy with his victims, dragging his prey to torture in the middle of nowhere. It’s the same every time, once or twice a week. You try to block out this grim reality from your mind, albeit fruitlessly.

You were no different than all his other victims – with the sole exception that you were the _favorite_.

You try to stay far from his little games – not that your word means much to him, he still forces you to participate from time to time. He wants an audience for the show, and you’re the perfect candidate. There’s nowhere to hide or run to, every exit is locked in some way, at least on the first floor, but you reckon you probably wouldn’t have much luck finding any means of escape either way. Not to mention, having grown up in this place, he knew it like the back of his own hand.

The sound of a door opening from behind interrupts the ticking of a silent clock tower, as you subconsciously grasp your fingers tighter together, lowering your gaze downwards even further.

You hear Brendon calling for your name, and you wait as he walks over to where you’re sitting.

_Speak of the devil_, it seems.

“Ah, here you _are,” _he says, standing a little too unnecessarily close as he hovers over you, placing his hands on your shoulders, making you stir just a little bit, “I was looking for you.”

“Uh-huh… yeah?” you murmur reluctantly, edging him to continue.

It seems tonight is no exception after all.

“Yes, there’s something that I need you to do. If you would just follow me upstairs, that would certainly make things explicably _easier_.”

Eerily calm, yet no emotion could be heard his voice - but by how tight his grip on your shoulders is, nails digging into your skin a bit _too_ harshly, it isn’t hard to tell he’s not exactly in a jovial mood.

Unclenching your hands, you graze your fingers across the cuts and bruises adorning on your arm and wrists over the sleeves of your button-up shirt; the types of grim reminders he would inflict on you with any nearby object with a sharp end if you stepped out of line at any time.

“...what do you want me to do?”

“Come along and you’ll see.”

Fearing of what he might do if you were to refuse, you stand up, the stool inching backwards and compliantly follow after him. Out of the dining area and walking up the steps leading to the second floor of this castle that leads the both of you into another narrow-spaced hallway. Dimly lit and colder than you usually remember it to be – then again, you didn’t come this way all that often.

Your chest tightens and the repulsive reflex of nearly feeling vomit rising at the back of your throat threatens to nearly force you to stop taking any more steps forward. Yet you refuse to respond to your senses alarming you of upcoming danger, and proceed onward, until the both of you instead reach another stairway leading down. A closed door up front stops the both of you and he turns to look at you, a gaze you couldn’t quite decipher. You never could. But since you inadvertently had discovered his true colors.

In a cruel twist of irony, he was showing them to you _right now_, but only what he wanted for you to see, leaving you still only scratching at the surface.

He opens the door leading to a cell, blocked by bars on the other side. Smiling maliciously, he gestures to the other side with his hand, standing aside to give you room to move past him.

“After you.”

With great reluctance, you go on ahead. The sight is just as expected as it greets you; not a whole lot inside the room, except some tools laying on the wooden table, alongside a pair of shackles chained to the stone wall on the opposite side.

Except, they’re not simply shackles hanging off the wall. There’s a person keeping them effectively pinned in place, just high above far enough that his feet touched the ground below.

The man, in his early-twenties, with a bloody gash on his shoulder and glazed eyes, looking around confusedly, no doubt having been drugged out of his mind prior being shackled.

“Oh, Adriano… had a nice nap while I was away?”

With a mocking tone, Brendon takes a few steps towards the captive, looking at him with nothing but contempt. The stranger says nothing and only glares at the monster in front of him.

“Be a good boy, Adriano, and look into the _camera_.”

He reaches behind the back of the man’s head, gripping a hold of his dark, messy locks none too gently, tilting his head upwards. Brendon’s sleeve momentarily slips downwards and you spot a bruise alongside his wrist. You wonder if the stranger – ‘Adriano’ - had attempted to fight back at one point.

You look at him in anticipation of what’s to come, taking notice he was out of his costume he liked to wear during his ‘_theater plays_’, as he so eloquently referred to these bloody massacres as. In his eyes though, either one wasn’t inherently incorrect. Brendon grabs something from the table. You expect him to begin another one of his ‘demonstrations’ on the victim, yet you stiffen when he approaches you instead with a sharp weapon in his hand instead.

“This _pest_ interrupted our playtime earlier, so... I want you to finish the job. A mark on his shoulder for you to know where exactly we’d left off.”

He holds the cleaver out to you, expecting you to take it.

You swallow the lump stuck in your throat, “Y-You… no, I… I can’t. I couldn’t.”

“You can. And you _will_.”

In an irrational attempt, you try to move backwards, _away from him_, but the rational part of your mind forces you to stay still.

“Don’t worry, darling. _No one will know. _You’re out of focus. Adriano here is the one who’s making a guest appearance on the show.”

You glance at the camera held up by a tripod.

“What are you doing with all these video tapes?”

Choosing to avoid your question, his gaze hardens, steely eyes narrowing at you. “All in its _own_ time, darling. Now, it’s either this, or would you rather be at the receiving end of this cleaver?”

His patience is thin-veiled. You take what he’s giving you.

(_butcher_, or be _butchered._)

You stand to the left of the person who’s shackled against the brick wall. The raven-haired stranger looks at you with inexplicable fear and pleading eyes. The monster behind you waits. Waits like he has all the time in the world for you to finish what he started.

_Quickly, now_, you tell yourself in your mind.

“Please… don’t do this. Don’t… please…!” the stranger pleads you in a quiet whisper in desperation, hoping you’ll look at him and somehow come to your senses as if you don’t have your hands tied on a string like a doll who’s being pulled along by a puppeteer. His lip quivers and your hands shake in the morbid silence that drags on for what feels like eternity, in reality not much longer than two minutes.

With widened eyes, you lower your weapon -- but before you can turn around and use it against your assailant--

\--you feel a knife pressed against your shoulder blade, it stings and it burns as you feel a drop of something warm trickle down your back. You squeal in pain and instinctively try to writhe away, but his grip on your wrist keeps you right where he wants you.

“Changed your mind yet?” Brendon asks with a bored, dangerous edge to his tone, dragging the cold edge of the blade lower onto your back, lightly this time as a threat he’s very well capable of tearing more flesh if you don’t comply.

You feel sweat running down your forehead and the loud beating of your heartbeat in your ears. You can’t tell if he’s sunk the knife lower into your flesh from impatience, but you feel the pain increasing with the nerves in your body on fire, you can’t take it, _**you can’t**_**\--! **

\--you see only a split second of Adriano looking at you in terror before a sound can be made as you raise the cleaver with a step towards the shackled prisoner. A sickening sound of a crack against skin, you expect a scream of pain to follow, the same sound always hear from anywhere inside the castle, or even up close the same way you are now, like the other times. You instinctively turn away, feeling some of the fresh gore spill from the stranger’s shoulder, smearing your chin up to your lips.

As the following eerie silence grows, you gather the courage to take a glance.

The cut on his shoulder stayed the same – it’d been his neck where you inadvertently had aimed, cutting deep enough that the cleaver had gotten permanently stuck inside the flesh. With a stagger and a gasp, you subconsciously stumble backwards, grip tight and accidentally yanking the weapon with you as it unclenched.

Brendon tugs the sharp weapon from your hands before it can accidentally land on your feet.

The lifeless body hangs with his head lowered and fresh blood still flowing like melting ice scream. You can't bring yourself to look. You hadn’t _meant _to kill him, and yet--

“W-Was that… adequate _enough_ for you?” you inquire softly, keeping your eyes away from the newfound corpse.

He’s forced you to indirectly hurt people or set them into traps before – never like _this_ though.

Fingers at the bottom of your chin and you’re forced to look up at the _real_ monster instead. There’s a certain tenderness there – _all false_, no doubt – but you relish in it as much as you can. You wonder how he’s able to look so gentle and trace his fingers across your face with such delicacy, yet doesn’t hesitate for a second to flip the script entirely if things didn’t go the way he wants them do.

“You stalled for a little too long the first time, but once I set the record straight... I knew you had it in you after all.”

A brief, soft smile (he seems... pleased) and he retreats his hand, turning away from you to turn off the recording and clean up the remaining mess.

Feeling woozy, you feel like your legs are about to give out. You use one of the tables to compose yourself, some of the spilled lukewarm blood from earlier smearing your palms. At that moment, you can’t bring yourself to care.

He would chip away every bit of virtue barely hanging on to you by a thread, until you were just as much of a cold, unfeeling _monster_ that he is.

Only a matter of time until then.


End file.
